Tyrone Shoelaces

The game's not over for us at 2-0 up because we can't defend a lead.

I remember waiting at that bus stop near Bill Eckersley's shop to get autographs on match days. Fred Pickering, Keith Newton and Mike England all got off the bus together and I got all three autographs. No Ferrari's or Bentley's for them, just a seat on a Corporation bus if they were lucky, I supposed they had to pay as well ! At that time only Ronnie and Bryan had cars.

Rigger has it right. Forget all the fancy systems, when you cross that white line the thought uppermost in your mind should be that the player you're directly playing against will be wishing he'd never bothered getting changed. Win the individual battles all over the pitch and you'll win the game.

Trying too hard to impress ?

He made a very good double save at the end that saved us going further behind.

He did OK, one or two decent saves. He couldn't do much about the goal. His kicking is shambolic though.

I didn't say " worst signing " I said " wrong signing for this league " . He's not mobile enough and he plays too deep. Graham came on for an ineffectual Antonsson after about 55 minutes. To be honest I didn't notice a difference. Having said that the service the strikers got was really poor today. Nobody played well all over the pitch.

I thought that Whittingham did OK doing what he's good at. Moving the ball about . The trouble he can't do the other things that are essential for a midfield player in this league. Running, tackling, closing down, challenging for headers etc. The wrong signing for this league. We needed a player to do what Jack Byrne did today and carry the ball into the last third at pace. He killed us today, especially in the second half.

Both. Poor team selection today. No way in the World can you expect lots of goals with Smallwood and Wittingham in central midfield and Samuel and Antonnson up front.

You did a good job, the programme was excellent then.

He needs to get a better phone.

I agree, I didn't have a problem watching Berkovic, J Jones etc.

Don't Jim.

We've certainly got a ready made caretaker management team in place if something happens to Mowbray.

There's appointing nonentities like Kean and Lowe from inside the Club and then there's appointing somebody with a proven record of success playing entertaining football. I'd have had Johnno and Dunny over Coyle any day of the week.

That's my worry about Johnno, he's not going to hang around with the kids for ever. The likes of Oldham will be sniffing around before too long.

He's got the team playing in his image. He always gave 100% and played with a smile on his face.

How many goals has Rhodes scored at a " higher level "? I must have missed that one. The problem was we were playing yesterday's football with Gestede and Rhodes up front. It was like Jim Fryatt and Malcolm Darling all over again. It may have worked 40 odd years ago but the game has moved on. Other, lesser, teams were out numbering us in midfield and getting the better of us all over the rest of the pitch while our two strikers were stood waiting for a pass downfield.

That's crazy. Rhodes is a yesterday's man. King is on the way up, he'll be at a better club than Bournemouth next season.

I wouldn't say King did nowt. He gave a Premier League Club ( Stoke ? ) a real chasing in the F A Cup at Ewood. Something that neither of Gestede or Rhodes could have done. If you'd have asked me which of those three had a chance of making it in the Premier League I would have chosen King because he had real pace, the other two were too slow to succeed at top level.

I can't see Messi getting 30 goals a season in this team never mind Rhodes. We don't get enough balls into the box, make enough goal scoring chances etc

Yeah you're right. If we don't give him a start we'll never know.

From what I've seen he's an exciting runner with the ball but he's an head down runner quite a lot of the time. He needs to learn to get his head up. Another thing I noticed is he only " lends you the ball " . What I mean by that is his passing is a bit haphazard and he's only concerned with getting it back. He may appear " greedy " to some but being head down leads to very individualistic play. Having said that if Conway isn't fit I'd give him a start on Tuesday before I'd play Dack or Antonnson out on the left wing.

I'm not his biggest fan by a long way but if he didn't fancy taking a pen that day he's got every right to say so especially if other guys wanted to take their turn. I agree most fans won't see it like that and he's probably finished at Wednesday. No point yearning for him back though, he'd struggle up front with us at the moment. How many chances do we make in a usual performance ? One or two each game.

Great report, thanks very much for that. I see Gillingham got battered 3-0 away at Rochdale yesterday. When I watched us in the flesh recently we seemed to play ourselves into trouble at the back more often than is healthy. Losing possession regularly in the last third of the pitch normally has only one outcome. The prospect of that team keeping a succession of clean sheets looked extremely unlikely. Mowbray seemed unconcerned about this yesterday. When he was asked he said he was more concerned about us launching the ball downfield.